


Sleeping Arrangements

by Sholio



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Gen, Team Bonding, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-11
Updated: 2011-01-11
Packaged: 2020-03-08 11:22:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18893620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Rodney is a sleep snuggler. This is an ongoing source of annoyance to John in assigning team sleeping arrangements.





	Sleeping Arrangements

**Author's Note:**

> Written as commentfic for kriadydragon's SGA Comment-a-Thon in the old LJ days, for the [prompt](https://kriadydragon.livejournal.com/234050.html?thread=2716738#t2716738): Turns out both Ronon and Rodney are rampant sleep-cuddlers when off world. John and Teyla make them bunk together so they can cuddle each other. Ronon and Rodney are both totally okay with this.
> 
> [Originally posted here.](https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/309944.html)

The first time John and his team had to camp out offworld, he put himself, Rodney and Ford in one tent, and Teyla all by herself in the other. Teyla clearly was very amused by this -- "Major, I have shared accommodations _many_ times with my fellow hunters and traders on trips through the Ring, not to mention sleeping with other children when I was young" -- but John didn't really want the expedition to get off on even more of a wrong foot in this galaxy than they already had. 

Teyla took first watch, and John rolled up in his sleeping bag and dropped off with the professional soldier's knack for falling asleep instantly anytime, anywhere. 

... only to wake up no more than ten minutes later, surrounded by a lot of yelling and flailing, with the fabric of the tent smothering him. 

Once they all managed to thrash their way out of the collapsed tent, with some help from Teyla, John stared at his wild-eyed, half-dressed teammates and said, "Okay, _what_? Snake in the tent?" 

"There are no snakes on this world," Teyla said, and quietly went about putting the tent back up, leaving the rest of them to sort things out. Probably a wise decision, John thought, especially when Ford and Rodney announced, "He attacked me," at almost exactly the same moment. 

"What?" John said. 

Rodney pointed at Ford accusingly. "I _told_ you what! He attacked me! I was simply minding my own business -- sleeping, actually, which is nothing short of a miracle considering that we're in the wilderness on an alien world with God knows what running around in the --" 

"Ford?" John said. 

"I'm sorry, sir." Ford self-consciously tugged down his T-shirt, glancing in Teyla's direction. "I felt something grab hold of my arm, and I just ... reacted, I guess." 

"I didn't grab anyone!" Rodney protested. "He hit me for no reason!" 

"I didn't hit him. I was just pushing him back to his side of the tent." 

"I'm guessing you're not used to sharing tents with other people," John said to Rodney. 

"I'm not used to being _assaulted_ in the middle of the night," Rodney said, but he looked genuinely shaken up. 

Now that John's adrenaline had slowly ramped down to normal levels, he could see both their points of view. He doubted if he would have been any less hair-trigger if Rodney had rolled on _him_ , but on the other hand, he wouldn't have reacted any better to someone shoving him in the middle of a deep sleep. They were all new to each other; if a tussle in a collapsed tent in the middle of the night was the worst of his team's growing pains, he felt that he'd gotten off easy. 

"All right, back to bed, Lieutenant. Rodney, you take the watch with Teyla. Wake up Ford when you're done." Rodney was sleeping on the far side of the tent from John; it was unlikely that he could migrate all the way across Ford's bedroll no matter how much he thrashed around. 

"But --" Rodney began, then sighed and went to put on his pants. 

"I really am sorry, sir," Ford said quietly as they bedded back down. 

"No harm done, Lieutenant. Get some sleep." 

John drifted off to the sound of Rodney and Teyla talking outside the tent in soft tones. He woke up some indeterminate amount of time later, when an alien squid from hell wrapped its suffocating tentacles around him to drag him down into the depths of -- No, wait, he realized, sitting half upright with one hand on someone's biceps and the other hand buried in the soft mass of a sleeping bag that wasn't his. Like Ford, he'd been sleep-assaulted by Rodney. 

"Major!" Rodney hissed loudly, and John felt him pulling away in the dark. "Personal space much?" 

"Hello?" John said in disbelief. "Pot? Kettle? Unlike some people, I'm still on _my_ side of the tent." 

A crack of dim light framed Ford's outline against the dying campfire, as he opened the tentflap enough to stick his head in. "Everything okay in here?" 

"Everything's fine," John said. "Go back on watch. Rodney, stay on your side this time, I _mean_ it." 

"I'm not doing this on purpose," Rodney muttered as small rustling sounds marked his retreat to the far side of the tent. "It's like you said -- I'm just not used to sleeping with other people." He spluttered as he realized what he'd said. "I mean! You know what I mean! Sharing tents! And things." 

"Put your pack between your sleeping bag and Ford's," John suggested. "That ought to stop you from rolling over." 

It seemed to work, although when John came in from his own watch to wake them up, the sight that greeted him in the dim light of early morning was Rodney sprawled across the pack and Ford's legs, with one of his arms thrown over Ford's waist. The Lieutenant was awake, and blinked up at John. "I know, sir," he said softly, with a sigh. Rodney didn't stir. "It was the path of least resistance to just let him stay this way. And it _is_ pretty cold in these woods." 

Further experience with his new team -- in tents, in inns, in various borrowed accommodations offworld -- taught John that Rodney was capable of migrating across virtually any distance to find the nearest source of body heat and burrow into it. He wouldn't actually leave one bed and move into another one -- thus, if he had a bed by himself, he was fine -- but otherwise, whoever took on Rodney as a roommate was inevitably going to wake up to find themselves shoved to the very edge of the bed, tent, fur-pile or whatever, with Rodney's arms and legs wrapped around them. Rodney was embarrassed about it, but that didn't make it any less annoying. 

"Look, guys, I can't help it if I sleep cold!" 

"Doctor McKay, you are as warm a campfire," Teyla said. By now she'd been a recipient of late-night involuntary sleep cuddling almost as often as her male teammates. 

Rodney frowned at her. "It's a form of parasomnia, obviously. Somnambulism. Sleep-walking. It's involuntary and I can't help it, so quit blaming me." 

"You don't _walk_ ," John pointed out. "You, um, squirm. And last night you drooled on my shoulder." 

"You act like I'm doing it on purpose just to annoy you!" 

"Maybe your subconscious wants to annoy me," John said. 

Teyla rolled her eyes at him and patted Rodney on the shoulder. "If we _truly_ minded, Rodney, we would make you take a room of your own. Since we do not --" She gave John a brief, pointed look over Rodney's head -- "then we will speak no more of it." 

"Right," John said. "Rodney, you and Teyla are roommates from now on." 

Teyla seemed to be okay with this -- apparently she wasn't kidding about sharing tents and beds with other kids since a very young age, and either she truly didn't mind, or her reflexes were good enough to fend off Rodney's cuddling efforts in her sleep. 

And then Ford disappeared, and John went back to Earth for a while with the rest of the command staff, and there weren't any more missions. For a while, he worried that there wouldn't be any more missions _ever_ , but eventually he was back in Pegasus with a newly minted promotion and a whole lot more official supervision. They didn't do any more overnight missions until Ronon was on the team. 

As usual, John paired up Teyla and Rodney. He gave Teyla the first watch, as had become their standard practice, and crawled into his sleeping bag wondering if he was going to have trouble sharing a tent with a relative stranger. 

Sleeping in the same tent with Ronon, as it turned out, was like sleeping with a spastic cricket. Ronon woke up with a violent flinch every ten minutes or so, sat up, looked around, and then slumped back down and dropped off to sleep. Every time he did it, John bolted awake. After the fifth or sixth time, John leaned over to shake his shoulder. His hand didn't even have an opportunity to connect before he was down flat on his back with Ronon's elbow in his throat. 

"Air!" John choked out. 

Ronon rolled off him. "Sorry. Thought you were -- Sorry." 

"No worries," John said, eyeing him. He couldn't really see Ronon's face in the dark, just the glimmer of his eyes. "Uh, are you all right?" 

"Sorry," Ronon said again, and John was suddenly, painfully reminded of Ford, apologizing for attacking Rodney in his sleep all those months ago. "Guess I'm not used to having other people around. Can't really settle down." 

"You want to take the watch?" 

"Sure," Ronon said, and slipped out of the tent, ghost-quiet. He had, John noticed, left all his clothes on, including his boots. 

When Rodney woke John to take the last watch, Ronon's sleeping bag was still rumpled and empty. John slipped out into the gray pre-dawn light and saw Ronon on the far side of the banked campfire, rolled up in his long leather coat. 

Things went on like this for a while. Ronon simply preferred to sleep on his own, on the ground, no matter how many attempts John made to talk him into coming inside. Ronon tried to explain it once. "All those years, I learned to wake up when anyone came near. The little noises they make. The sound of breathing. Even asleep, I can't stop noticing it. Feels like something crawling on my skin. Can't sleep through it." 

While they were being held prisoner by Ford's Merry Men, of course, they didn't have a choice. They all shared a room in Ford's cave complex. That first night, the enzyme had wrought so many changes on the personalities of John's team that he barely recognized them anymore. Teyla was short-tempered and angry, Rodney was an agitated, paranoid ball of nerves -- okay, not that different from usual -- and Ronon ... 

Ronon had turned completely touchy-feely. He draped an arm over Rodney's shoulder while he was talking to him, put a hand on Teyla's waist and kissed the top of her head (before picking a fight with her, but oh well). When they all reluctantly settled down in the pile of furs, hides and probably-stolen blankets that Ford had supplied, Ronon immediately rolled over and spooned up against John, who could feel his own muscles lock tight. "Too much proximity, there, buddy," he muttered over his shoulder. 

Ronon just snuggled tighter against him, and threw an arm over John's ribs. John went, if possible, more rigid yet. 

"Ronon, seriously. I don't think I can sleep this way." 

"I missed it," Ronon said softly, his voice a little slurred from the enzyme. 

John paused in the act of preparing to push him off, and not merely because he was likely to get himself decked for his trouble, considering that Ronon was twice as strong and aggressive as usual. "Say what?" 

"This." Ronon's voice was so quiet that John could barely hear him. "We -- Satedans -- compared to other worlds, we _touch_ each other. A lot. I haven't -- I don't --" And he fell silent again. 

John didn't sleep much that night, with Ronon breathing down the back of his neck and occasionally torquing John's spine when the enzyme or nightmares made Ronon flinch in his sleep. But it was worth it. 

They didn't ever talk about it, but after that, Ronon started joining the others in their shared tents, rented rooms or whatnot. And he hadn't been kidding about the Satedans being a touchy-feely bunch, because as he started warming up to the rest of them, he turned out to be an even more incorrigible sleep-cuddler than Rodney at his worst. John got used to waking up half-smashed under various parts of Ronon, or wadded up against the wall. 

Finally it came to a head at an inn on M56-3YR. There were only two double beds -- Teyla and Rodney had one, John and Ronon had the other, and Ronon kept accidentally shoving him right off the high wooden bedframe. After the third time that John woke up face-down on the floor, with Ronon sleepily slurring, "Sorry," and reaching down a long arm to haul him back up, he sat up and said, "That's it, get up. I'm dragging this bed against the wall." 

Ronon, however, had gone right back to sleep. "Hey," John said, poking him. "Move your ass, damn it." 

Just then, there was a thump and a startled, sleepy feminine squawk from the other side of the room. John looked over and saw Teyla picking herself up off the floor, looking disgruntled. Rodney was a blanket-wrapped lump all the way over on her side of the bed. Teyla smacked him in the shoulder; he mumbled something that sounded like "farglebargle" and burrowed deeper. 

Teyla looked up. She met John's eyes across the room. 

"Switch?" John said. 

Between the two of them, they manhandled a half-asleep Rodney across the room and dumped him into bed next to Ronon. Ronon rolled over and threw an arm over Rodney. Rodney burrowed into him. John and Teyla looked at each other. 

"Towards the wall or towards the door?" Teyla asked politely. 

"Door." 

"I expected you would say that." 

As John stretched out under the blankets, he said, "I'm not sure what bad habits I might've picked up from the last few months of full contact sleep hockey, so don't hesitate to send me packing if I get into your space." 

Teyla yawned. "I shall, never fear." 

Morning sunlight filtering across his pillow woke John slowly out of a deep sleep. He blinked at the low, smoke-blackened timbers of the ceiling, then turned his head to see Teyla fast asleep, curled on her side with her hair spread in a coppery mass across her pillow. One arm was tucked under her cheek, and she was completely and fully contained on her side of the bed. 

It was the first time in months that John had woken up offworld without being kicked, rolled on, or half-smothered. Not that it wasn't still flattering to know that Ronon trusted him that much, but the uninterrupted sleep had been awfully nice too. 

Teyla's eyelashes fluttered, as if she'd sensed him watching her. She opened her eyes, gave him a smile, and stretched under the blankets. "I am _so_ well-rested," she said, sounding lazy and blissful. 

"Me too." John sat up and looked over at the other bed. Ronon and Rodney were one solid mass in the center of the mattress. They appeared to have fused together in their sleep. He couldn't even tell where one of them left off and the other one began, but he was pretty sure they hadn't moved all night except to burrow more tightly against one another. 

Teyla sat up beside him and began combing her sleep-snarled hair with her fingers. "I believe," she said thoughtfully, "that we have found our new permanent sleeping arrangements."


End file.
